MONTREAL, MEXICO CITY, SÃO PAULO, February 22, 2018—The largest rural movements in Brazil, representing well over a million farmers, are protesting a new Brazilian regulation that would allow release of gene drives, the controversial genetic extinction technology, into Brazil’s ecosystems and farms.

Interactive map from ETC Group and Heinrich Boell Foundation shows growth of climate control efforts

09 November 2017

This interactive geoengineering map, prepared by ETC Group and the Heinrich Boell Foundation, is an attempt to shed light on the worldwide state of geoengineering by showing the scope of research and experimentation. There is no complete record of weather and climate control projects so this map is necessarily partial.

For the past decade, a small but growing group of governments and scientists, the majority from the most powerful and most climate-polluting countries in the world, has been pushing for political consideration of geoengineering, the deliberate large-scale technological manipulation of the climate.

This briefing, prepared by ETC Group and Heinrich Böll Foundation in May 2017, gives an overview of what geoengineering is and why it is dangerous, as well as up-to-date information on proposed geoengineering technologies and governance.

108 organizations urged IPCC to review flagrant conflict of interest of allowing two oil company employees to co-author a crucial report on global warming

03 May 2017

12 May 2017

On 27 April 2017, 108 civil society organizations signed a letter requesting the IPCC to reconsider its list of authors for the upcoming Special Report on keeping global warming below 1.5°C. Two senior employees from major oil companies were selected among the authors for the Report, which the letter considers a major hurdle to make a fair report, and a violation of the IPCC's conflict of interest policy.

CANCUN, MEXICO – The UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which gathered at its 13th Conference of the Parties (COP 13) in Mexico from December 4-17, decided to reaffirm its landmark moratorium on climate-related geoengineering that it first agreed to in 2010.

It is not often that so many prominent scientists reveal their ignorance on a topic in such a short space. This was the case for the public letter that a hundred Nobel laureates published on June 30th defending genetically modified organisms (GMOs), particularly the so-called “Golden Rice,” and attacking Greenpeace for its critical stance on these crops. The letter is so full of high-sounding adjectives and epithets, false claims and poor arguments that it seems more like a propaganda tirade from transgenic companies than scientists presenting a position.

Some governments are exploring geoengineering as a way to reduce or delay climate change. Geoengineering could technically take climate decisions away from all but the richest countries. Computer models show that stratospheric interventions to reduce sunlight and lower temperatures may benefit some temperate zones, but negatively impact Asia’s monsoons with important social and agricultural consequences.

OCT 31, COPENHAGEN — It’s hallowe’en at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s 40th plenary session, but as the world’s premiere climate science body releases its latest report, observers are wondering if the planet has been played a very nasty trick indeed. The IPCC appears to have embraced carbon geoengineering in the form of CCS and BECCS (Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage), which it now claims can achieve “net zero emissions” somewhere in the second half of the century. But critics are calling the move a case of dangerous “magical thinking”.

IPCC Shoots a Silver Bullet (Point) for Climate Change, Includes Geoengineering in its Latest Report

27 September 2013

As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published the first installment of its latest climate change Assessment Report, AR5, the final paragraph of its Summary for Policymakers – a bullet point referring to proposals for deliberately altering climate systems – has caused consternation by addressing the controversial topic of geoengineering. (1)While the paragraph does not endorse geoengineering, as had been proposed by Russia, its very presence is ringing alarm bells.

La Via Campesina, GRAIN and ETC welcome a new UNCTAD report which states that farming in rich and poor nations alike should shift from monoculture towards greater varieties of crops, reduced use of fertilizers and other inputs, greater support for small-scale farmers, and more locally focused production and consumption of food.

Chaos theory proposes that a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil could cause a hurricane in Texas. Complexity theory compounds the chaos by adding the quantum-like effects of, for example, genome changes in the butterfly to the conflictions of supercomputer models. Now, geoengineers want to multiply the complexity with politics. The result is an extreme form of artificial intelligence.
Gaia is complicated. From stratospheric currents to undersea rivers – and from plankton to palm tree emissions and sequestrations – quantifying, qualifying and calibrating planetary systems is at least as challenging as understanding genes or neurons. Despite decades of modeling, we are no more likely to predict next month’s best picnic day than we are to anticipate the proclivities of our DNA or to trace a memory in our cranium. Frustratingly, we have learned to map and manipulate genomes, geographies and memories, but we can’t control the consequences.

The Contracting Parties to the London Convention and London Protocol, at their Joint Meeting in London this week (29 October to 2 November 2012), agreed on a statement of concern regarding the iron fertilization project in ocean waters west of Canada.

Since the Stockholm Conference of 1972, there has been a proliferation of treaties, agreements and institutions, but the money hasn’t matched the meetings and the decisions haven’t been matched with democratic participation. The multilateral system’s environmental response has been incongruously ad hoc and also ad nauseum. Among the indicators…

ETC Group's view on International Governance ETC supports open, equitable and democratic global governance arrangements that recognize the expertise and enable full participation of social movements – especially indigenous, farming and local communities – and other civil society organizations.

Rio +20 can call for a UN-level technology facility (either combining or separately addressing the need for technology transfer and technology assessment), the details of which can be scheduled for final negotiation in the follow-through to the conference. Grounded in the Precautionary Principle, the facility would have the institutional capacity to identify and monitor significant technologies, including an evaluation of the technologies’ social, economic, cultural, health and environmental implications. Assessments would be completed before a new technology is released.

Pat Mooney analyses the different threats to be addressed at Rio+20 in 2012 and the counter proposals global civil society and its allies could avance. Interview made at the World Social Forum in Dakar in February 2011 for "The commons on the global agenda" chapter in remixthecommons.org.

Although Rio+20 negotiators are discussing marine applications of geoengineering (so-called “ocean fertilization”) in the context of climate change and technological “quick fixes,” the wider issues of geoengineering, including so-called solar radiation management, are not being discussed. The UN Convention on Biological Diversity established a de facto moratorium on all forms of geoengineering in 2010. Nevertheless, some governments are continuing to look toward technological methods of blocking or reflecting sunlight and other planetary system adjustments. Rio+20 should make a firm statement banning geoengineering to prevent a handful of countries -- a new “coalition of the willing” from taking the Earth’s thermostat into their own hands.